Essays

Essay Contributors Stephen M. Barr, Ph.D. Professor of Theoretical Particle Physics Bartol Research Institute University of Delaware Newark, Delaware Edward J. Furton, M.A., Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly Boston, Massachusetts John A. Schirger, M.D., M.A. (Phil.) NIH Clinical and Research Fellow in Cardiovascular Diseases Cardiorenal Research Laboratory, Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota Brendan Sweetman, Ph.D. Professor of Philosophy Rockhurst University Kansas City, Missouri

Aquinas and Darwinian Chance and Necessity

John A. Schirger, M.D.

Many theories and ideologies have contributed to the development of our modern outlook on the world and our place in it. Few, however, have so influenced the modern worldview as the Darwinian concept of evolution. Both Nietzsche and Marx acknowledge their debt to Darwin for the foundations of their own philosophies.1 Ordinary people are profoundly affected by their understanding of the influence of Darwin as well. George Sim Johnston writes of a friend visiting an elderly lady, a relative, who was dying in a hospital. She had apparently lived a reasonably good life and was not hostile towards religious belief but rather considered herself an agnostic. At this very critical time in her journey her relative apparently tried convincing her of the existence of God but her answer was that evolution has been proved by science. So the Bible cant be true.2
1 2

Daniel C. Dennett, Darwins Dangerous Idea (New York: Touchstone, 1995), 62, 181.

George Sim Johnston, Did Darwin Get It Right? (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Inc., 1998), 8.

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Many of us, perhaps in different contexts, have probably been confronted with similar opinions among both ordinary people as well as academics. The influence of Darwin is, of course, felt in discussions about ethical aspects of human behavior3 including issues pertaining to medical ethics. In a very influential book, H. Tristram Englehardt, Jr., suggests Darwinian evolutionary theory may underlie the society of moral strangers we find in our secular culture attempting to reach consensus regarding difficult decisions in the arena of medical ethics.4 Our worldview, after all, shapes our ethical deliberations. What is it about Darwins evolutionary theory that seems to undermine belief in God and in the first principles of human action? For some, it may simply be the suggestion that the Bible or particularly the six-day creation account is not literally true. Others may find the concept of human beings evolving from lower life forms problematic. Still others may find the notion of the survival of the fittest, with the apparent disregard for weaker members of a species objectionable. Yet none of these objections prove problematic for traditional Catholic theology. St. Augustine, with his concept of seminal reasons or notions within matter, made the case in the fourth century after Christ that the natural world as known to human beings could have been instituted gradually over time.5 These seminal reasons might have remained hidden as it were, or existing in a merely potential way, awaiting full actualization according to a plan in the Mind of God. How these potentialities are realized depends on the mysterious interaction of causes proper to nature as well as Gods governance over naturebut that they develop over time is accepted without difficulty. Pope John Paul II has reaffirmed Pope Pius XIIs teaching of the compatibility of evolution with Catholic theology if it allows for Gods specific intervention to account for the human soul.6 And the notion of a fallen world in which all of nature groans is certainly compatible with the pain and suffering inherent in the concept of the survival of the fittest.
3 The following quote is instructive in this regard. Modern science directly implies that there are no inherent moral or ethical laws, no absolute guiding principles for human society. Free will as it is traditionally conceived simply does not exist. There is no way the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make moral choices. Kenneth R. Miller, Finding Darwins God (New York: Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 1999), 171172. First published as W. Provine, Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics, MBL Science 3.1 (1988): 2529.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., The Foundations of Bioethics, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 412.
4

See for example, Divine Ideas as Prototypes, in Vernon J. Bourke, ed., The Essential Augustine (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1974), 6263. See also Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion (San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers Inc., 2000), 104.
5

See for example, John Paul II, message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22, 1996), Magisterium Is Concerned with Question of Evolution For It Involves Conception of Man, LOsservatore Romano (English), October 30, 1996, 3,7; and Pius XII, Encyclical Letter, Some False Opinions which Threaten to Undermine Catholic Doctrine, Humani Generis (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 1950), both of which can be read on www.NewAdvent.com.
6

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SCHIRGER \ AQUINAS AND DARWINIAN CHANCE AND NECESSITY Nondirectedness in the Evolutionary Process
Why then does Darwinian evolution remain problematic to a belief in God, and therefore, to the way we consider our ethical decision making? The answer is simply that Darwinian theory, and even more so neo-Darwinian theory (Darwins thought coupled with modern genetics and molecular biology), attempt to account for the order we see in nature in part through notions of chance, randomness, and nondirectness in the evolutionary process. The question then arises whether such an account can be reconciled with the notion of Gods providential action in the natural world. Darwin himself certainly did not think so. Discussing the theological implications of his theory Darwin wrote I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance.7 Nor do many evolutionary biologists or philosophers of evolutionary biology today hold out any hope for providential action. Daniel Dennett, for example, argues that the genius of Darwins theory is that it accounts for order in the natural world without reference to design, and therefore, to a Designer. Drawing heavily on the work of Manfred Eigen and Bernd-Olaf Kuppers, he argues that life originated and evolved according to physical-chemical laws and the exploration of design space in an algorithmic process in which individual steps are mindless or automatic and feed[ing] on each other or on blind chance.8 Kuppers also makes clear that there is an element of indeterminateness or chance in this process; and thus, directedness in the evolutionary process cannot be inferred.9 Does the notion of chance or randomness in the origin of and evolution of life truly undermine the notion of Gods providence in the natural world? The answer of course depends on ones theological framework. If one thinks of God designing like a human engineer who makes (or attempts to make) every part fit perfectly into the whole, with nothing wasted or discarded, in a way that additionally makes his design transparent to the inquirer, the notion of chance playing a role in the evolution of the natural world may prove problematic to the notion of Gods providence. If, however, ones theology can take account of real chance in the natural world, which can be subsumed under the higher order of Divine Providence, then Darwinian evolutionary theory is compatible with Christian theology. I would like to suggest that Thomas Aquinass theology possesses the conceptual tools for this task; however, before exploring how this is so, it would be helpful to clarify the concept of chance.

Miller, Finding Darwins God, 312. Quoting from Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1887), May 22, 1860. It is interesting to note that Darwin did not feel that his position implied atheism but did contest the notion of a providential God.
7

Dennett, Darwins Dangerous Idea, 59. See ibid., 133136, for an example of his discussion of design space which is something like the exploration of all the different possible interactions for genetic variations with different environments.
8

Bernd-Olaf Kuppers, Information and the Origin of Life (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1990), 151.
9

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The notion of chance or randomness carries several meanings. For Aristotle a chance event is one in which several unrelated causes come together to bring about an event. While there is no implication that such an event is uncaused, the individual causes that bring about that event are not directed or aimed at bringing it about. In addition, chance events in nature are, for Aristotle, rare.10 Thomas Aquinas follows Aristotle in this definition of chance, but as shall become clear later, chance takes on a distinctive character for him which it does not have for Aristotle. Statistical chance, such as the rolling of a die, applies set probabilities to certain events, the outcome of which we would know if we only knew the initial conditions. Thus if one could know all of the forces applied to a pair of dice cast upon a table, one would know with certainty which number would result from the throw. In other words, chance in this sense implies the lack of adequate knowledge on the observers part to be able to accurately predict the outcome of an event. Quantum chance, on the other hand, implies an intrinsic indeterminacy in nature at the subatomic level, that is not the result of an inadequate knowledge but is part of reality itself. Darwin emphasized variations in individuals of a species upon which natural selection could act in order to select favorable and eliminate unfavorable variations. His emphasis was primarily on the nondirectedness of those variations11 and, as noted above, he thought that the place of chance in his theory argued against a Divine Providence operating in nature. He, of course, was not able to understand the mechanistic basis for those variations as we can today, given our knowledge of quantum theory, modern genetics, and molecular biology. We understand that a gene in the germline of an organism could mutate and pass on a phenotypic variation to subsequent generations that could be acted upon by natural selection.

Chance and Necessity

In a very influential book titled Chance and Necessity, the French biologist Jacques Monod wrote of the interaction of chance and physical laws inherent in the process of the origin and evolution of life. His book is of interest for several reasons. In emphasizing the role of chance in the evolutionary process, Monod is instructive in clarifying the different ways that the notion of chance is employed in the neoDarwinian synthesis.12 Monod points out the role of intrinsic or quantum chance in the spontaneous occurrence of some mutations.13 He argues that chance also plays a role in the deterministic or necessary aspect of evolution at the level of natural selection.14 Particular environments, by chance, interact with particular results of
See Aristotles Physics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle (Grinnell, IA: The Peripatetic Press, 1980), book II, chs. 68.
10 11 See Stephen J. Goulds discussion in his The Structures of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, The Belknap Press, 2002), 10351037. 12 The neo-Darwinian synthesis explains variation through modern genetics and molecular biology. 13 14

Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 113.

Ibid., 118.

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genetic mutation in order for natural selection to occur in a concomitance of nonunified causes resulting in a chance event very similar in form to that described by Aristotle. In a bold move, he additionally argues that the conditions necessary to bring about the first life forms were so improbable or unlikely that the fact that they happened was an absolutely unique event that occurred by pure chance.15 Interestingly, while he took this to support his argument to dispense with the notion of God, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger has suggested that such a notion is very compatible with divine action in bringing about the origins of life.16 Monod may have codified the concepts of chance and necessity in the process of evolution, but these concepts have been more or less active in evolutionary theory since Darwin and remain the key concepts of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. We have seen that Darwin emphasized the nondirectional aspect of the interaction of the environment with variations in phenotype to effect evolutionary change. Today there are different schools of thought in evolutionary biology, some emphasizing the role of chance or randomness, and others, the physical laws or necessity in the evolutionary process. As Ernst Mayr points out, however, both aspects play important roles in evolutionary theory.17 In the development of genetic variation during gamete formation, chance predominates, while during the process of natural selection, determination or necessity predominates; although as we have seen chance plays a role here as well. Proponents of both schools of thought agree that evolution is a nondirected process. Stephen J. Gould, who emphasizes the role of contingency or chance in the process, argues that variation is unrelated to the direction of evolutionary change.18 Bernd-Olaf Kuppers, an advocate of the importance of physical law or necessity in the evolution of the original life forms, admits that the [molecular Darwinist] theory predicts that biological structures exist, but not what biological structures exist, emphasizing the role of chance and indeterminacy even at the very earliest stages of evolution.19 Admitting the resulting orderliness of nature, Daniel Dennett emphasizes the genius of the theory, in that order is accounted for without design.20 Thus the question arises of whether the providence of God in the natural order is undermined if order can be accounted for by a process of chance and necessity. For Darwin and his contemporaries, William Paley was the primary proponent of natural theology, that is, of inferring a design requiring a Designer from the order and regularity seen in nature. At the beginning of his book Natural Theology, Paley considers the difference in what his reaction would be if, walking along, he came across a watch as opposed to a stone. If he were asked, he speculates, as to
15

Ibid., 144.

See J. Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1995).
16 17 18 19 20

E. Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 119121, 228230. Gould, Structures, 144. Kuppers, Information, 151. Dennett, Darwins Dangerous Idea, 6871, for example.

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how the stone came to be there, for all practical purposes he would dismiss the question, suggesting that it might have been there forever. Not so with a watch. The watch has several parts put together for a purpose.21 After detailing the complexity of the assemblage of parts required for the watch to perform its purpose, Paley concludes that the watch must have had a maker who formed it for [its] purpose and designed its use.22 Paleys analogy for how nature works is a mechanistic one. Chance clearly cannot play a role in designing a watch, and likewise nature, with all of its parts fitting together for defined purposes, must have been, for Paley, designed by a Designer. Darwins theory, however, provides another explanation, namely, that over long periods of time, variations among individuals are selected by chance and result in a natural world whose members are fit and adapted to their environment. If this theory is correct, then a natural theology like Paleys is discredited, and instead of a benevolent, providential Designer, we are left with physical forces guided by blind chance to account for the order in the natural world.23 Today neo-Darwinists, attempting to argue against not merely the providence of God, but the existence of God, often take William Paley as their theological reference point.24

Is Darwinian Chance Compatible with Natural Theology?

How then does Thomas Aquinass theology hold up against Darwinian evolutionary theory? Aquinas can be read as a proponent of natural theology both in his famous five proofs for the existence of God and in his discussion of the Divine Government (or Providence). By this I mean simply that he argues from the effects of God to the existence of God, on the one hand, and to the notion of Divine Providence on the other. In arguing from the effects of God to his existence, Aquinas employs the well known five ways, from motion, from the nature of efficient cause, from the contingency of beings, from the gradation of being, and lastly, from the governance of the world.25 The first four arguments are not affected by Darwins
W. Paley, Natural Theology, 12th ed. (London: n.p., 1809), 2. [http://www.hti. umich.edu/cgi/p/pd-modeng/pd-modeng-idx?type=HTML&rgn=TEI.2&byte=53049319] (May 12, 2003).
21 22 23

Ibid., 3.

For purposes of argument, I am presuming Darwinian evolutionary theory to be true. There are influential criticisms of Darwins theory, for example, Philip E. Johnsons Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1993), that should be carefully considered. See for example Dennett, Darwins Dangerous Idea, 133, and Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1987), 46. It is very interesting to note that John Henry Newman, in a talk delivered in 1855, four years prior to Darwins publication of On the Origin of Species (London: John Murray, 1859), expressed serious reservations about the argument from Design. See Christianity and Physical Science: A Lecture in the School of Medicine, in John Henry Newman, The Idea of A University (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), 337342. In addition to arguing that such a theology contracts our notion of God regarding practical actions and piety, Newman objects that it does not allow for the possibility that God can undo or mar His own work.
24 25

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, Q. 2.3.

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theory, and thus, Darwin per se does not pose a threat to Aquinass multifaceted argument for the existence of God. In the fifth way Aquinas argues from the order seen in the world to the existence of a Designer. This argument is weakened by a theory, namely Darwinian evolutionary theory, that claims to provide an account of order in the natural world without reference to a Designer. Similarly Aquinas argues for the notion of Divine Providence from the effects of the world. In I-I, Q. 22.2 of the Summa theologiae, Aquinas addresses the question of whether everything is subject to the providence of God. Contrary to Democritus and the Epicureans, who maintained that the world came about by chance, Aquinas asserts that all things are subject to Divine Providence [which] is nothing less than the type of order of things toward an end. The object of providence is the ordering of things to their ends, and therefore, if things are ordered toward ends, they are subject to providence. Within the order of nature we observe that things usually happen regularly and for the best, implying directedness and perfection. Aquinas argues that this order observed in things is a sign of their being governed [which is] to lead them to their end.26 And further on, in article five of the same question, he argues that all things that are subject to generation and corruption, while they do contain an element of chance, are not completely subject to chance, and in fact, the element of chance found in these things indicates a governance of some sort, for unless corruptible things are governed by a higher being, they would tend to nothing definite. Thus, for Aquinas, the order and regularity we find in nature indicate a Providential Governor who guides things toward their proper end. While chance exists in nature, it cannot be seen as bringing about the orderliness of the natural world as its disparate elements need to be ordered again by a Providential Governor, namely God. Although there are important differences in Aquinass and Paleys natural theologies, they similarly argue from the order of the world to a providential God. We have seen, however, that Darwinian theory provides an account of the order and fitness of the components of the natural world through chance and necessity. Thus, in inferring divine providence from the order of nature, Aquinass natural theology is not compatible with Darwinian evolutionary theory. One important difference between Aquinas and Paley is that Aquinas respects the reality of chance in the natural order. Indeed, as we have seen, Aquinas even argues that the fact that there are chance events in things subject to generation and corruption indicates that Gods providence governs these thingsfor the most part they act regularly. Indeed Aquinas argues that, while fortuitous events do happen in the natural order, in the order of Divine Providence nothing in the world happens by chance.27 Thus for Aquinas when chance is involved in a natural process, resulting in order, it is ultimately subsumed by the order of Divine Providence. When combined with Aquinass agreement with Augustine that God could have instituted the world with some animals initially created only potentially, and distin-

26 27

Ibid., I, Q. 103.1.

Ibid., I, QQ. 103.7, 116.1.

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guished and adorned28 in time rather than immediately, this very simple yet very important conclusion allows a reading of Aquinas which is consistent with Darwinian theory. First, one can continue to hold Aquinass first four proofs of the existence of God without any conflict with Darwin. In order to be consistent with Darwinian theory however, Gods providence cannot be inferred from the order of nature but must then be accepted from his revelation or inferred from history or personal experience. While chance in the natural order may play a significant role in the development of potentialities in nature, i.e., in the evolutionary process, chance events in nature are ultimately encompassed by Divine Providence. Such a theology, while consistent with scientific theory about nature, need not take as its starting point the order in nature to prove either Gods existence or providence. Specifically, one could argue that Aquinas is not in principle opposed to the development of potentialities into actualities over time, through a mechanism including chance in the natural world that is subsumed under divine providence theologically. Such an argument has the virtue of being consistent with Darwinian evolutionary theory. Gods providence, which is known from revelation, history, and personal experience, is seen to govern, in a mysterious way, the aspects of evolution occurring by chance, and thus the whole process. Both the integrity of nature and the sovereignty of God are preserved.

28

Ibid., I, Q. 74.2.

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